In the world of Livian scholarship, there are few whose body of work rivals that of B. In addition to various articles and chapters on Livy's work, its manuscript tradition and the historical events that it covers, B. has edited the Teubner editions of Books 31–45, and has now completed a full-length commentary on these same books, spread across four volumes and nearly forty years (Books 31–3, 1973; 34–7, 1981; 38–40, 2008; 41–5, 2012). In many ways, then, the present publication represents both a complement to, and a culmination of, a career's work, and the result is impressive. The commentary is preceded by an introduction, which is divided into five sections examining sources, textual tradition, events surrounding the outbreak of the Third Macedonian War, problems of chronology in each of the five books, and the recruitment and assignation of legions from 178–166. Three appendices (‘Tenses of the Subjunctive in oratio obliqua’, ‘Proconsuls and Propraetors’ and ‘The Peregrine Praetor’) function more as supplements to other discussions – the first two to appendices on the same topics in B.'s commentary on Books 38–40, the third to a forthcoming article – than as stand-alone treatments.

Of the extant books of Livy, 41–5 are by far the most problematic textually, depending entirely (save for a single fragment found in Priscian) on a highly corrupt and lacunose Italian manuscript from the fifth century that sits in the Viennese Österreichische Nationalbibliothek. However, as textual criticism has always been a particular strength of B.'s, this plays to his advantage, with the excellent textual notes occupying a large proportion of the commentary. His approach is broadly conservative (he is generally loath to emend, even to give a slightly better reading, if the paradosis is defensible) but balanced, and the often painstaking discussions of the paleographic merits of variants are informed by an intimate familiarity with the manuscripts (e.g. ‘Fr. 1 has forum, a good example of the sort of error committed by Grynaeus’; ‘Both ea for eae and adimerent for adimeret are the easiest of corruptions, and of the sort frequently found in V’). Of course, the state of the text means that many sections are impossible to establish with any certainty, either because the lacuna is too large, or because the corruption is such that a number of equally plausible suggestions for its emendation exist. In the latter case, he usually gives an overview of the various options before reluctantly opting for one (‘I chose the first because it involved the smallest change, but I have little confidence that it is what L. wrote’ is a typically apologetic defence), a tactic that may strike some as evasive, but is far preferable to artificial certainty. For more significant lacunae, such as that created by the loss of four quaternions of Book 43, B.'s examinations of what can be deduced regarding their content go a long way towards painting a fuller picture of Livy's narrative. One minor quibble with respect to the textual notes concerns their headings, in which longer passages are indicated simply by their first and last words, with the result that the language under analysis often does not appear on the page. The decision is understandable, as commentaries are by definition companions to the text, and it might seem a waste of space to repeat material that the reader presumably has in front of him or her. However, to this reviewer at least, such considerations were outweighed by the inconvenience of having to flip between multiple volumes in order to follow the detailed arguments.Footnote ¹

One of the major criticisms of B.'s first two commentaries was that they had a tendency to substitute references for discussion of their own, so that it was necessary to consult other sources even for basic information. This was remedied to a large extent in his third volume, and here again notes are noticeably more fleshed out than they were in his early work. B.'s navigation of the twisted chronology of the ninth pentad in particular stands out, aided by a strong grasp of the Roman calendar and of Republican political procedure, and the useful timeline established in the introduction is complemented by thorough discussions in the relevant notes.Footnote ² Accounts of internal affairs and diplomatic and military activity are lucid, as are comments on stylistic matters, even if few new insights emerge. Nevertheless, traces of the old approach remain: information on towns and persons is regularly reduced to some variation of the formula ‘for x see y’, while some notes are so laconic as to verge on the banal (e.g. ‘in pace: the phrase occurs 46 times in L.’). The result is occasionally absurd, as when ‘spectatores pugnae: cf. 42.59.4 n.’ leads to a note that reads ‘spectator certaminis: cf. Yardley 29’. It is not until we arrive at the end of the trail of references that we find out that Yardley's discussion cites both spectator pugnae and spectator certaminis as distinctly Livian expressions, and it is difficult not to feel that a more straightforward solution would have been to reference it directly and perhaps append a brief explanation. Examples of similar phenomena can be multiplied.

As always with Livy, the question of his sources looms large, and it is fortunate that the relevant sections of Polybius' narrative survive in significant portions. These are listed in a table in the introduction along with the passages of Livy to which they correspond. B. clearly commands an excellent knowledge of the Polybian account, and detailed notes comparing parallel passages establish a good framework for analysis of Livy's use and adaptation of his source material. Occasionally, though, he attempts to be too precise in distinguishing between Polybian and annalistic sections of Livy's text. It strikes me as dubious, for example, to ascribe specific sentences to the annalistic tradition when no parallel survives, especially given the incomplete nature of the text of Polybius. Similarly, even when one agrees with B.'s assessment it gives pause to find passages described as ‘clearly annalistic’ without further explanation: a similar confidence was long felt in dismissing Polybius as a source for the opening books of the third decade, a view which has now been strongly (and, to my mind, convincingly) challenged.

These reservations aside, this work is a monumental achievement, and will undoubtedly become an indispensable reference for anyone studying Books 41–5. B.'s Teubner, already a standard edition of the text, receives substantial corrections and improvements, aided by an admirable readiness to admit his own mistakes that is encapsulated in a sentence from the preface: ‘I have come across so many errors in the apparatus of my edition that a list of them in an appendix would have been unusable: instead they will all be found in the commentary’. And while originality in points of substance is rare, the guidance of B.'s assured hand achieves something that is arguably more important, namely to lend these sometimes fragmentary books a new found sense of completeness and coherence.

I noticed no mistakes of consequence, and the typos that inevitably occur in a work of this length are infrequent. Formatting and punctuation errors, while minor, were more plentiful, particularly (for unknown reasons) surrounding the use of parentheses, which are repeatedly opened without being closed and vice versa.